


Châtelaine et senêschale

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Settle in and find your home [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Pepper Potts and her team of badass ladies, Pepper is kind of not okay, Pepper runs a super-efficient company, Pepper wants to save the world, Post-Battle of New York, Post-Iron Man 3, Tony's terrible people skills, acute traumatic stress disorder, hypercompetent women, ladies in the Tower, people with absurdly high IQ, quietly retconning implausible/insulting canon moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: A quintet of essential moments including the Stark Industries Chief Legal Officer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 takes place immediately after the Stark Expo (well, several weeks after), aka _Iron Man 2_ ; chapter 2, after the Battle of New York, aka _Avengers_ ; chapter 3, after the Mandarin incident, aka _Iron Man 3_ ; chapter 4, after the Greenwich Attack aka _Thor: The Dark World_ ; and chapter 5, after Insight, aka _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_. 
> 
> To be honest these are just to give some background/insight/screen-time for Eva de los Santos, who I deeply enjoy writing.

The first thing Eva notices about Virginia Potts when they meet in person is the contrast between the woman who smiles, shakes Eva's hand and sits down at the other side of the table, and the woman one would generally see on television or in the pages of magazines. And Potts has spent quite a bit of time on both in the last little while, for one reason or another, so Eva has quite a bit to compare to the woman now in front of her, in the actual flesh and bone. 

The woman on television is always extremely chic, and flawlessly turned out. The magazine editors probably don't even have to photoshop much. Her hair is perfect and her makeup is the best in perfect but invisible correction, except for a possible accent of lipstick depending on the Look of the day. Her outfits are masterfully constructed, and _constructed_ is the right word for them: everything from shoes to earrings is very carefully balanced and arranged. Sometimes it borders on turning the woman into an artwork. 

Eva respects the careful thought that's always clearly gone into her outfits, and what that thought clearly is. Where, in effect, Potts decides to draw the tightrope line she has to walk between the acceptably feminine and the hard, touch-me-not edge that keeps that femininity from being too likely to attract the wrong kind of attack. 

It's a different place than Eva draws her own line - but Potts is also younger than she is, and the arc of her life has had quite a different trajectory and probably didn't include what Eva will readily admit is the huge advantage of inheriting _generations_ of family clout. So Potts' line bows a bit more to the need to constantly be in touch with what's newly in-style, while at the same time taking every advantage possible - for instance, how right _now_ that lets Potts wear lines that remind Eva ever so slightly of the spines on a sea-urchin. 

And, of course, just to make sure nobody misses the point, there's always the pair of spines that come on Potts' omnipresent stilettos. 

The woman on television and in the magazines works to make sure everyone's subconscious thinks she's made of razor-blades, and she's quite good at it. 

Here, though, sitting across from Eva under the gazebo in the rose garden, there's nowhere near the sense that Potts is trying to embody a weapon. Today Potts is wearing a pair of loose silk pants, very nice little black ballet flats, a sleeveless linen top with a wide embroidered-silk belt around her waist, and even has her hair down, brushing over her shoulders, the long layers and the bangs making an appealing frame for her face. 

Eva wants to say it makes her look younger, except it doesn't. The woman in the photos has always looked like someone frozen at age twenty-four, and then forced through the next eighty years without being allowed to change: youth in the face and body, and age - and a lot of it - behind the eyes. The makeup erases time, and humanity. 

The woman here in the gazebo just looks like a healthy woman in her thirties, and also like a human being. 

Eva doesn't for a second think it's anything less than deliberate, but it's also not a lie. This is probably how Potts would present herself all the time, if she thought she could get away with it - she simply knows she can't. Eva can tell, can see it in posture and gesture. 

Which makes Potts being in Spain, and coming all the way out here first to leave Eva the message, and now to come back, even more . . . unexpected. It isn't like she has any reason to be here, or - as far as Eva knows - any reason to want to talk and certainly, as far as Eva knows, no reason to want to be without armour of any kind, even the visual. Eva doesn't _mind_ \- 

Alright, no, that's a bit of a lie, and Eva does try not to tell those to herself: it goes rather beyond not minding, as she's starting to go _out_ of her mind with boredom. Bad enough that she fall and mangle her knee for no good reason, just a misstep on wet concrete, bad enough it the damage needed god-damned _surgery_ to repair, but having it take this long to get better is . . . driving her around the bend. A bit. A lot. Maybe. 

The bout of norovirus hadn't helped. 

So she'll take the diversion of an inexplicable visit from a completely unexpected person, thank you very much. Especially since Eloy can't fuss at her about not resting without being rude, and would rather cut his own toes off. 

"Sorry to make you come back out here," Eva says - and it feels a little odd to speak English after the last two weeks of only being around family, the way it always does. She gestures to the mottling around her knee, which is still pretty vivid. "Apparently we're going for the long side of the estimated healing time, and everyone here has better things to do with their time than drive me around." 

"Whereas if Happy's driving me around," Potts says, smiling and deflecting the need for apology rather neatly, "he's not fussing at Security people who are just trying to do their jobs, so that works fine. Besides," she adds, glancing appreciatively around Eloy's rose-garden as a stand-in for the entire estate, "this place is beautiful." 

"Well I can't argue with that," Eva says. It might be starting to pall for her, because it's also excessively peaceful and idyllically bucolic and while she doesn't object to horses by any means she certainly doesn't love them as much as her sister-in-law does, but you certainly can't say that Eloy's home isn't gorgeous in the extreme. Eva just . . .isn't made for the country. 

She glances up as Marina brings out the tray of coffee and sweets from the house. "And I get spoiled, and everyone here is either family or has worked for the family for so long they can ignore me when being bored out of my mind makes me snap - gracias, Marina," she adds, as Marina puts the tray on the table and gives Eva a Tolerant look for good measure. 

"Don't believe her," Marina tells Potts, in slightly stilted English, because everyone does this kind of thing, because - Eva supposes - they think she's funny when she's flustered and this is one of the few ways to make her flistered. "I never once heard her snap. Not even when she was sick, or just back from the hospital. Only nicer person I know, is her father." 

Because it's only nice to play along, Eva puts a semi-dramatic hand to her face, Potts laughs, and Marina goes back in with a slightly smug expression. 

"Well she's right about one thing," Eva notes, mildly, just to leave it there. "My dad is much nicer than I am." 

She sits up to pour coffee, and it takes a bit of effort to wrestle with habits and convince her hindbrain that she can just let Potts choose her own additives, because her grandmother isn't here, looking over her shoulder, tsking about her ability to be a hostess. She doesn't have to Preside over every little moment. 

There's the basic pleasantries, because they both know how these things go: Eva asks about Potts' travels and whether they were comfortable, and how the clean-up from the Expo is going; and Potts asks about Eva's surgery and how long she expects to be off the leg. Eventually, though, Eva says, "I'll admit I'm a little out of the loop, since my brother confiscated my laptop and my phone yesterday on the grounds that what I was doing didn't count as resting, and I haven't got around to haranguing him into giving them back yet, but last I'd heard there were a lot of rumours that you were resigning." 

Because they might as well move this along. 

"Exaggerated," Potts says, taking another almond-pastry and sitting back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. 

Then, as if granting a silent point, "I mean yes: after being bodily whisked off by Tony in his suit at the _last minute_ to escape a significant mass explosion that followed the mass _hijacking of drones_ based on technology stolen from my company and given to a maniac, during which hijacking I basically ran the entire evacuation and without my doing so people would have actually _died_ , which they didn't, after a week of handling the fallout from if not the worst than certainly the most _publicly destructive_ meltdown Tony Stark's ever had, yet again less than two weeks after I agreed to openly run the company," and here Potts pauses for a breath, "just at that specific moment in question, I _may_ have screamed at Tony that I was quitting before I literally keeled over from the stress - but you know, I feel like I was entitled." 

Eva has to work hard not to really choke on her coffee from the laughter. She makes a gesture to stand in for the _that seems fair_ she can't say while coughing, and Potts shrugs. "I woke up the next morning a little less overwrought," she continues. "And bluntly I realized since I've basically been doing most of the work that comes with being CEO of the damn company since, oh, two months after my first paycheque, but doing it metaphorically backwards and in heels in a room full of invisible hornets nests, damned if I was going to let things go now." 

"I think," Eva says, having finally stopped the coffee from ending up in her sinuses for sure, "that's _very_ fair." 

She resists being gauche enough to ask why Potts is here, or preempting what seems like the most likely reason for Potts to be here, because you do have to respect someone coming to that kind of conclusion and being willing to say it out loud. Especially given the things that would have stood in her way. So while Eva still has no more intention of signing on to work with _any_ major company than she has had every other time she's turned someone down, she's not going to jump the gun. Not yet, anyway. 

Potts leans forward a little. 

"Here's the thing," Potts says, and the lightness and laughter and hah-hah joking that, in Eva's experience, is the hallmark of being a woman in America (and much of the rest of the world, but particularly America) and not being branded "INTIMIDATING BITCH-QUEEN" is . . . gone, replaced by a kind of certainty that Eva didn't expect. And the shift and change in her intensity and her focus is such that, suddenly and very unexpectedly Eva feels a little less certain about how this is going to unfold. 

"Despite the obnoxious hyperbole from people with no idea what they're talking about since Tony redirected the company from arms manufacture," Potts goes on, in the same direct, focused way, "Stark Industries is one of the most stable and influential companies in the world. It has been more or less since Howard Stark settled down to actually run it after the Second World War, and that's not going to change any time soon. And I will be absolutely blunt with you: Tony stepping down as CEO and asking me to step in meant my job-title and my salary changed, and I don't have to chase him around his workshop to get the pro forma signatures I need anymore. The company was _never_ handcuffed to weapons sales, despite Stane's best attempts, because Howard Stark wasn't that stupid and fortunately we managed to get rid of Stane before he actually fucked everything up, and I know exactly what I'm doing." 

Eva finds herself nodding. Her sister-in-law had been ranting about that just recently, as it happens, as multiple major meetings for the family holdings and decisions about the next year had started to come up - where to invest, and how, and all the little things that bored Eva to death and which she is so very, very happy the woman her brother married seems to enjoy. 

But the time of year, and the point in the five-year cycle, meant that over any family meal that didn't have children hanging on their every word, Eva's sister-in-law would be venting her frustration with people who didn't seem that quick to get with her picture. Since Beatriz's is the picture of a devastatingly intelligent women who knows what she's doing, as far as Eva and more importantly as far as _Eva's_ mother and grandfather can see, Eva's got some sympathy with that frustration. 

_The shit that is solely weapons and munitions-related has never made up more than a quarter of what that company does,_ Beatriz had snapped, having spent the day arguing - apparently - with both Eva's brother and the non-family partners about that one. 

Eloy, who had apparently given in, also gave Eva the look that said _Just let her rant. Please, just let her rant._

_Yes,_ Beatriz had gone on, _yes yes it might look bigger if you're stupid, but only if you're stupid - like do you think things like efficient off-road vehicles are_ only _wanted by military organizations? Sure, give it maybe two, three years to turn around the marketing focus and details in the production but then boom - I mean Jesus Christ think about it even rockets have more uses than just blowing things up! And if you think they actually need military funding - !_ She'd thrown up her hands, Beatriz' most dismissive gesture. _Of course they took it, you're an American company and your government is willing to throw you some of the billions they burn on their war machine every year you take it but that company has more assets than the fucking Vatican and they hide them just about as well._

"Most importantly," Potts goes on, evenly, "we now have the single most viable design for long-term renewable non-polluting electricity production on the planet," and yanks Eva's full attention back to the present moment and away from Beatriz's remembered frustration. 

"Really," she says, raising both eyebrows, but keeping most of the surprise out of her voice. "The last I'd heard the limitations of palladium were still a significant factor." To put it mildly. 

She hadn't paid a great deal of attention to Eloy's explanation of the ion decay involved with palladium in arc-reaction contexts, but it had summarized more or less as _you need too much of it, and the toxicity of the byproducts is unfortunate._

It was, as she understood it, still a much better ratio of energy to toxic by-products than any other available method, but people weren't usually convinced by _but it makes_ less _poison_ even when perhaps they should be. 

"There have been recent developments," Potts replies, with the kind of blandness that is its own comment, and makes Eva raise her eyebrows even higher. Potts smiles slightly.

"Tony resigning as CEO allowed him to move to the far more suited role of CIO," she says, for the first time sliding a little bit into the kind of polished voice Eva's heard her use on television, but with an entirely understandable edge of smugness and of wry humour, and Eva laughs a little. She's perfectly willing to _bet_ that Tony Stark works better as a mad scientist (yes, Eloy, she thinks to the mental construct of her brother, very well: mad _engineer_ ) inventing magical things in his workshop than he ever did as the head of a company.

"Additionally," Potts says, "at the tail-end of his melt-down, in a bid to both not die of palladium poisoning _that he didn't tell me he was suffering_ ," and here she gives Eva an expressive and dire look and Eva returns a very genuine one of sympathy because that's a horrifying thought, "and to keep the government's disastrous support of Hammer Industries from getting everyone killed, Tony managed to synthesize a previously unknown element that somehow does something that produces energetic radiation that is super low in all of the ionizing radiation forms that kill us and so on."

She makes a slightly apologetic face. "Tony has tried to explain to me about seven times and I still don't understand, but everyone we talk to who has a degree in these things goes through a very predictable cycle of 'disbelief, incredulity, screaming excitement' about it." 

Eva blinks. "You're _kidding,_ " she says, even though she knows Potts isn't. "Well. That's . . . one hell of a silver lining." 

Potts adds, dryly, "I'd've been even happier about that if he hadn't decided to synthesize it in the ruins of the Malibu house, with zero safety protocols, a jerry-rigged system and a massive case of self-confidence and tunnel-vision, and if he'd managed to do it without destroying a culturally priceless mid-century modern art piece, but on the other hand in exchange for getting humanity off fossil and radiation-heavy fuels, I suspect history may forgive him for that one." 

"You're serious," Eva says, assimilating the implications of this and watching the future blow wide open in that particular way that undoubtedly won't be recognized as the future blowing wide open until students are doing early-twenty-first century history for their undergraduate degrees - or whatever the hell humanity has instead - in three hundred years time. 

"There are many things that Tony gets hideously wrong, or can't be trusted about," Potts says, absolutely serious. "His engineering work is _not_ one of them. He says the biggest challenge will be designing the rest of the system to take the energy flow efficiently and without costing everyone's arm, leg and ear, but he also expects to have working prototype solutions to that within a year. And he is . . . " she closes her eyes and sighs the sigh of the long-suffering. " _Obnoxiously accurate_ when it comes to that kind of estimate.

Eva stares at her. She even forgets about her knee being sore. And about her coffee. The implications of this are - 

Potts goes on, "While obviously we intend to keep the method of synthesis for the new element proprietary for a certain amount of time, it's actually not that difficult, it _can_ be synthesized, the process is no more dangerous than refining hydrocarbons and the byproducts are all actively useful. In short, once we've figured out how to adapt existing energy-transportation systems to take it, this is an honest-to-god solution to global energy needs. And I fully intend that it should be."

Eva continues to stare, but allows herself to blink a couple of times, and nod slightly to show that she is, in fact, listening. She's just also attempting to process this. And the implications of that last sentence. 

Which Potts follows up on by saying, "Stark Industries also has a large number of other projects being fast-tracked into development, equally likely to be both beneficial and profitable and the _kind_ of profitable that makes _everyone_ richer, and I do actually mean everyone, the totality of humanity." Her mouth twitches into a shadow of distaste. "Because unlike so many people in this area of human endeavour I actually don't feel the need to get into a pissing contest about who can hoard the most gold like some kind of short-sighted mediaeval dragon." 

Eva suppresses a snort: it's honestly an excellent description. 

Potts continues, "So by everyone, I mean everyone. Positing that we might even achieve a post-scarcity global existence might be a little ambitious," she finishes, shifting from genuine seriousness to a droll deadpan, "but on the other hand I started my career with a diploma from a career college after it turned out my Bachelor's in English was pretty much useless, and then I ran Tony's company through his obstructive ass for almost a decade, and yet I just ran my first major urban-crisis evacuation so I suppose I don't know any other way to be." 

Somewhere in her mind, the mental construct of Beatriz is looking at Eva, arms folded and eyebrows raised, asking her if she's _aware_ of how much of a platonic crush she's developing on this woman, right here and right now. Eva tells the mental construct of her sister-in-law to fuck off, because she's busy - and also yes, yes she is aware. 

And damn it she has a sneaking suspicion she's going to end up working for a large corporation. 

While Eva's thinking all that, Potts pauses and takes a deep breath. "I am actually in a position," she says, quietly, "to run a major multi-national corporate power-house the way it _should_ be run. And do what it _should_ be able to do in the world. And I think," and here she hesitates, "I mean, I'm honestly sure that I don't have to explain the implications of that. What it could mean to have a company with the clout of Stark Industries be what it _could_ be, bring to bear the economic and resulting social influence." 

She pauses, and this smile is a little self-deprecating as she says, "I mean, I didn't realize the implications of it. What the opportunity was. Not until after the Expo." 

"Out of curiosity," Eva hears herself say, "what made you realize?" She feels like she might be buying time. But now that Potts has said it, she wants to know, too. 

Potts laughs, a dark little laugh that's both self-conscious and not. She folds her arms and sits back. "When the police were arresting Justin Hammer he accused me of using the situation to get rid of the competition. Backhanded compliment - I think his words were _thinking like a CEO_. I had other things to worry about at the time, and then I almost got blown up, so I almost forgot about it." 

Eva acknowledges that with a slight lift to her coffee-cup. Potts shakes her head. "It came back to nag at me later but . . . not the way he wanted it to. Because mostly all I could think was - how does someone think like that? He broke a violent criminal, a terrorist, out of prison, killing multiple people to do it, and then enabled that same terrorist to take control of multiple incredibly destructive weapons targeting a mass civillian gathering and then he tried to _interfere_ with efforts to deal with the situation, and yet somehow this is about the _companies_? Somehow he thinks the problem here is about _competition_? When we, by the way, aren't even competitors because my company doesn't make weapons?" 

"And then you saw some of the media response," Eva fills in, nodding slowly. Nobody'd come out and said it as baldly as Hammer apparently did, because most of the world was a little more in touch with reality than that miserable goblin . . . but on the other hand, nudge-nudge wink-wink remarks about how convenient it was that such a significant competitor had lit itself on fire, for the brand new untried CEO (and even Eva had rolled her eyes at that) had . . . abounded, in some spaces. 

"And I realized that Jesus fucking Christ - pardon the language," Potts interrupts herself before going on, "- it really is baked in. I have been doing what I do for a long time, I know the field and yes, fuck knows, competition can be brutal, but these people really do not realize that at the end of all of this is about _real human beings_ , a real world, one that doesn't actually revolve around their token score numbers in their bank accounts. And the potential of the position I'm in, and what I can do . . . unfolded from realizing that. And it's huge."

"But," she says, a little more briskly, "if I'm going to do that, I need very, very good people to back me up. And one of the things I need," and now Potts' tone turns slightly acid, "is a CLO whose response to proprietary technology being _blatantly stolen from us_ isn't to wring their hands and tell me that we can't possibly take them to court over it because that would get the government mad at us." 

"Wait," Eva says, completely derailed from contemplating the ethics of business and the even sliver-slim possibility of a utopic future by the sheer impossibility that she had just heard what she'd actually heard, " _what?_ They what? That was _stolen_?" 

Potts sighs the long-suffering and slightly agonized sigh again. "Yes. Rhodey actually physically stole the War Machine suit from Tony's house," she explains, then seems to just barely hesitate, " - for reasons which, to be fair to Rhodey, were pretty compelling at the time and I'm not actually angry with _him_ because it was also - the actual circumstances of the physical reality of the theft," she says, stopping herself, "are complicated. But the aftermath isn't. Or shouldn't be. And yet, that's what I fucking got from Legal." 

Eva notes that Potts has stopped apologizing for swearing - not that she needed to in the first place, but it's still telling. Eva's also still having difficulty accepting the sheer craven . . .she's _insulted_ on behalf of her vocation, is what she is, that anyone who considered themselves worth a six-figure salary (anyone at all, really, but certainly anyone valuing their work so highly) would counsel rolling over in such a totally spineless way in face of such an egregious violation of governmental bounds and the simple laws of property and ownership. It's offensive. It's unacceptable.

But Potts isn't finished. She says, "And then let's be completely honest here: I'm talking about actively destroying the oil and coal industry, among other things, and while frankly there will be jobs for most of the people who actually _work_ in those industries and plenty of them, it's not going to be the coal barons and oil princes that are running this shit if I have anything to say about it, and I will, and that is going to earn me a _lot_ of enemies with _very_ deep pockets that are also just full of Congressional Representatives and Senators from just about everywhere. Obviously, I cannot even begin this work with a legal department that rolls over and shows its belly after a literal physical theft of proprietary tech from a private home." 

And that is absolutely god-damned true. 

Eva honestly feels like she's being proposed to. 

\- well, fine: in a way, she is being proposed to, in that a proposition is being implicitly put to her. But in some way she can't put her finger on, this feels like _proposal_ , the kind that more normally goes at the end of overblown romances - all of Helena's endless insistence that Eva doesn't really grasp the fundamental nature of the romance genre aside, she's read enough and had enough shoved at her by the general culture to know the shape. A flighty part of her thinks all this needs is a ring and some Regency language - and, of course, to be about romance. But that's besides the point.

And that's the flighty part of her because less than five minutes ago Eva thought knew how this conversation was going to end, and it was going to end with her saying "no". Again. 

She has always said _no_. To Stark Industries and to everyone else. Five minutes ago she knew she always would. Everything she had any interest in achieving was, is incompatible with simply making herself part of some corporation's wall of lawyers. Even the foundation stone. 

She'd thought. 

The first time Obadiah Stane had asked her to come work for the company, Potts hadn't even started working at Stark Industries yet, and Eva had just forced the company to pay a significant amount of damages to her clients over an industrial accident caused _entirely_ by negligence on the company's part - what should honestly have been investigated as criminal damn negligence, but she'd take having sued them into submission and having refused to settle out of court with an NDA because fuck you, Obadiah Stane, fuck you. Younger, more arrogant and - to be honest - somewhat stupider, Eva'd coolly told him to sit on a traffic cone and rotate. 

Not that the _gist_ of her response to him would have been different now (Eva had had _no_ trouble crediting that the man would try to murder Stark first by hiring terrorists and later by apparently losing all sense of proportion and building himself an ode to pointless gigantism), but a few more years had hammered the concept of dignity and discretion into her head. Eventually. 

If nothing else it made it harder for people to complain about you without making themselves seem ridiculous, and it always does to embarrass your enemies. 

There had been others, over the years between then and now. She'd even had a brief verbal fencing match with Tony Stark when they were both about twenty-six, although he'd been smart enough to know there was no chance of anything with her, from hiring her to fucking her, within thirty seconds of meeting. The fact that he'd kept talking to her - about Mozart, if she recalled correctly, about whom he'd been completely wrong - in spite of this had always suggested there was slightly more to him than met the tabloid front pages, but she'd assessed him as in need of two years of detox and twenty years of therapy before he could upgrade to _hot mess_ from _total fucking disaster_ , and hadn't really thought much about him since. Or his company. 

And now Virginia Potts is running that company, and she's just come here, and presented Eva with this, and now _she's_ asking Eva to come work for her, and "no" just got _much harder to say_. 

Even _if_ Eva can, right here and right now, see her brother just _looking_ at her with the expression that states clearer than anything he could possibly say that he finds her idealism adorable but slightly worrying, and more than a little heartbreaking. And she hasn't even told him anything yet. 

She has told him that _younger_ brothers aren't allowed to give their _older_ sisters that kind of look; he'd told her to stop deserving it, then. 

And finally she just thinks, _Oh, Hell._

Everything else is probably the definition of rearguard action. 

"Alright," she says, because first things first, before she even keeps thinking about this, "before we go any further I have to ask you a slightly awkward question." 

Potts looks surprised. "Yes?" she asks, cautiously. 

"Is 'Pepper' actually your preferred given name?" Eva asks, resigned. "I know it's an awkward question and believe me I don't mean anything by it and it's fine as a name if it is, it's just that it's the _kind_ of name that I, personally, need to know whether the answer is yes or no before I can feel comfortable using it, especially given the circumstances of your history in the public eye." She sighs. "Blame my grandmother. I have been thoroughly inculcated with slightly obsolete civillity." 

She waits, comfortably, while Potts finishes bursting into outright gales of laughter, because that's sort of the inevitable result of a question like that, but it's _true_. It's funny, and true, at the same time. So Eva leans her chin on her hand, leaning against the arm of her chair, and waits until the other woman gets her breath back. 

"Oh my god," Potts says, breathlessly, "I'm sorry - I know I'm laughing but I actually, I'm slightly touched by the question. I grew up 'Pepper'," she explains. "The hair," and she points, "and then I was in a sorority so it stuck, and I did try going back to Virginia when I started working but then Tony found _out_ about my sorority and my nickname and that was pretty much the end of that. And now, ironically, _literally_ the only person on the planet who calls me 'Virginia' _is Tony_ and only when he's being deliberately obnoxious. So yes, 'Pepper' is absolutely fine, it's just . . .my name." 

"Great," Eva says, "perfect, as I said it's just something I needed to check, so - ah." She takes a deep breath. "Are you on a timeline?" 

"I have absolutely _nothing_ on my schedule except this," Pepper replies immediately and perhaps just a little hopefully, and Eva thinks, _oh, Hell_ again, because she's probably doomed. 

Actually she was probably doomed from the moment Pepper mentioned the absolute lack of _spine_ she had to deal with from her current CLO. Because that really is just _offensive_. 

But _now_ she's almost certainly probably doomed. 

"Then I'm going to go reclaim my tablet from my interfering brother," she says, taking a deep breath, "and also let Elia know we probably have one more for dinner, and that might take a moment or three because I'm still hobbling, but then we can . . . talk about this some more." 

"Sounds fantastic," Pepper says, in the voice that strongly suggests to Eva that this is already going better than she expected and she herself is trying not to let rising hopeful excitement show. 

Which significantly increases the likelihood Eva is doomed. 

 

At ten o'clock that evening, with Pepper settled in the guest-house (because of _course_ her poor driver hadn't known to refuse to drink anything any of the stablehands offered unless he thoroughly checked to see if it was alcoholic first, and also because it's ten o'clock that evening and hospitality is important), and with both of the children put to bed, Eloy sits in the private family living-room across from Eva, giving her exactly the look she expected to get. 

She does her best to ignore it. 

Beatriz on the other hand just shrugs. "I think it sounds fantastic," she says. "And you clearly want to do it, so do it! You can always quit and sue her to death later if things go wrong." 

Eloy gives his wife her own level look, kin but not the same to the despairing one he'd been giving Eva. "You spent two hours today yelling at people on the internet about - " 

" _And_ I am on the verge of getting _meaningful_ animal welfare regulations and inspections for both event and _training locations_ imposed in time for the next Summer Olympics," Beatriz interrupts him, sweetly. "Despite having to drag the entire equestrian fraternity of Europe all the way there over gravel and broken glass and possibly some of their dead bodies by the end of this, we'll have to see. So what was your point, my darling husband?" 

Eloy wisely abandons that line of argument and merely looks heavenward. Beatriz shrugs and sits down on the arm of the sofa, her half-full wine-glass in her hand. "Eva, darling, you've done amazing things with your life, we all know that, but you've also spent the whole time drifting from arena to arena trying to change the world piecemeal. This could be your opportunity to do something more systematic. More effective and satisfying. The potential resources are _astonishing_. And she clearly _really_ wants you, so lay your ideal arrangement in front of her as your set of conditions and see if she goes for it. And if she does, then why not? Like I said, you can always leave and vindictively sue her later if you need to." 

On the one hand, it's Beatriz to the core; on the other, one of Beatriz's habits that's both endearing and infuriating is her tendency to be right on these things. 

"I'll sleep on it," Eva temporizes. 

Eloy gets that look that says he already knows how this is going to end, and she refrains from kicking him. For one thing, it's childish. 

And for another, her knee hurts.


	2. Chapter 2

Eva is surprised at how well she's handling the bit about the alien invasion. And how close she was to the heart of it. 

 

Eva's memories of that day are oddly clear and oddly detached, but not as much as she'd expect if she'd been functioning through shock. 

She evacuated the Tower along with everyone else, when the alarms started to scream after the strangely advanced-looking flying machine arrived on the roof and a bunch of armed men started filing out. It took the invaders some time to get around the security measures blocking the doors and the upper floors as the elevators shut down and the fire-doors to the stairways slammed shut and locked, and on, and on. It meant that by the time they'd gained access to the building at all, most of the people in it were already flooding out the front doors - orderly, but flooding - and the rest were maybe one or two floors up. 

In general, Eva doesn't think much of the man who runs security, although she does understand the life-long loyalty (through some fairly hair-raising incidents plus all of Tony Stark's misbehaviour) that means Pepper does in fact need to reward Hogan with _something_ , and heading up security seems to be all he wants. Pepper actually seemed startled by how readily Eva did accept that explanation, while promptly going on to give Pepper a lot of suggestions on how to get around the fact that the job was miles, leagues, light-years beyond Hogan's competency. 

She supposes corporate America, especially nouveau riche corporate America (and from her point of view the 1930s does indeed count), isn't that good at loyalty and obligation, for all they seem to be front-runners with nepotism and ordinary old corruption. Sadly, the worst of both worlds. 

But here, at least, Hogan gets his shit impressively together, quite a bit beyond what she expected him to be capable of. Maybe that's because it's a concrete problem with specific responses, outcomes: there is a right thing to do, a right way to do it, it's systematic and rote, and he knows the ropes. 

And she can't fault him for courage either: she was the second last person out of the building, and Hogan was the last, having swept and re-swept and of all things found a support-worker from the daycare hiding in a bathroom, completely hysterical. He almost had to carry her down the stairs, and given the faint accent Eva wonders later if the poor woman had been a refugee to start with, or had some other background of urban violence she'd thought she'd escaped and which now came back down on her like a landslide, knocking her mind off-balance. Either way, the woman was a disaster and Hogan handled both that and the rest of it very well. 

After he handed her off to Eva, he went back to do a last announcement to leave the building _now_ and sweep of the ground floor, before ushering all of them who were left into the last van. 

He was also pretty good at steam-rollering over the young NYPD officer who tried - briefly - to take control of the evacuation. He might, Eva supposes, have had some problems with the older, more effective SWAT and other tactical teams being deployed around the building, but they seemed to take one look at the SI-run evacuation convoy, decide that they had far too much shit on their plate with the strange flashing beacon-thing that's now stabbing light up into the sky and that they'd have to be idiots to interfere with and take responsibility for something that seemed to be working. 

So Eva evacuated with everyone else, to the point away from the Tower that was - to start with, at least - considered far enough away from the Tower to keep everyone out of the line of fire. 

Most of the employees were sent home from there, provided they didn't live right down-town, but Eva told the COO, Herman Forsythe, to go to the Jersey main office to sort out handling the company-specific end of the crisis from there, and that she'd stay here and bluff and-or bully her way into what the operations control here. He gave her a dubious look, but seemed to decide _better you than me_ and left. 

It hadn't been that hard, actually, to get right where she wanted to be. Particularly after she had explicitly positioned herself as the SI liaison. Not that there was much for her to do to liaise - the SHIELD "liaison", scare-quotes very much deserved, clearly ran the whole thing, and other than clarifying where the Stark Tower security points and strategic weaknesses were and weren't, there wasn't much for Eva to do. Pepper was in the air and Tony was . . . well frankly the SHIELD so-called liaison knew better than Eva on that one. Other than "cooperate with the first-responders to see to everyone's safety", there wasn't much to do or decide. 

But it let her stay close and watch. 

On reflection, Eva supposes that's probably strange in and of itself. Most people would want to get as far away from that kind of mess as humanly possible. But the idea had been absolutely revolting - the idea of being _away_ , of knowing something this big had happened and then not knowing what was going to happen, what was happening, how it went, what it meant. That seemed like an "I'd rather cut my own foot off" scenario if Eva'd ever encountered one. 

NYPD SWAT did attempt to make entry on the Tower, more than once. Then when they got there, there were several more attempts significantly supported by what Eva could only assume were SHIELD commandos. It didn't seem to be of any use; each of them was quickly repelled by the force occupying the Tower. At one point Eva gave a SHIELD commando her security card for the building: she's not sure it helped much. She overheard a squad leader note that he was pretty sure that at least four of the hostiles were either dead or wounded enough they wouldn't be an ongoing factor, but that they needed more live bodies themselves if they were going to make progress without significant casualties. 

And that never happened, because the National Guard and other military support didn't have time to get there before the sky opened up and everyone realized how seriously fucked they were. Even the SHIELD liaison didn't seem prepared for the alien invasion. Whatever they were expecting, it clearly wasn't demonic-looking space aliens flooding out of the sky. 

As she watched the sky open, Eva thought a number of things, including how beautiful it was, and precisely how little anyone on earth could do against technology that could result in _that_ , and how many cults had just gotten what they would see as the vindication of their lives and how much trouble _that_ would cause, and she also wondered why the fuck _precisely_ this whole thing was happening right on top of Stark Tower. It wasn't as if it was anywhere important. 

Not really. Not by any human measure. 

(Later, she found herself wondering exactly who the aliens, or at least the specific alien in command, thought actually ruled the world. And wasn't sure that any government on Earth would like the answer.) 

Eva watched all of it from operations command, quietly standing out of the way as the double-wide trailer quickly emptied of almost everyone else, to be refilled by men and a very few women whose uniforms indicated serious rank and position. She watched it become _very obvious_ that the evacuation perimeter was nothing like big enough, and also that even the tanks that rolled up were not going to be enough to do more than knock a few of the smallest of the invaders out of the sky. 

That the best, indeed probably the only thing anyone on the ground could do would be to protect the civillian evacuees: to put _all_ their efforts into getting people the _hell out_. That the only hope beyond that anyone had was one that sounded _utterly insane_ , or like the plot of a deeply stupid movie, and like many other things in the real world didn't give a flying fuck if people thought it made any sense, and was going to happen anyway. 

Eva hears later about the chaos of trying to get that mass evacuation started: at shifting the buildings just outside the initial evacuation zone from lockdown to _get out_ ; there's an internal inquiry in the NYPD about the preparedness of their officers, the reaction-times, all of it, which comes to the conclusion that SWAT and other special departments did pretty well but the ordinary patrol officers need six or seven crash courses in emergency management; the escapes through subway tunnels, moments of insane, overwhelming and often fatal heroism as the Chitauri started to actually get soldiers on the ground. 

As people were killed, despite everyone's best effort. 

And of course she watched the main battle, six fragile people against who knows how many enemies - watched as it happened over her head and on the screens in that trailer. Saw all of its absurdities, its awe-inspiring madness first hand. 

The sheer ludicrous image of Tony plummeting towards the street until somehow he's encased in his armour and veering into the attack. The strange madness of watching the figure of Captain America and two other ordinary humans deploy out of the crashed super-jet, of thinking this could help. 

Watched the tiny figure of the man who drove up on the fucking _scooter_ and the moment that man rippled outward into the huge green _thing_ that punched one of the strange monstrous creatures so hard it _stopped_ it, kills it right there. Watched the Tower ringed in lightning. Watched all of it. 

Watched the tiny figure of Tony Stark flying something (nobody on the ground except possibly the man in a general's uniform who had gone white, and silent, and looked sick, just a moment before, knew it was a nuke until much later) into the gaping hole in the sky and then fall back out of it, just barely making it before the hole snapped closed.

Finally watched all of the Chitauri collapse where they were, dead, or dormant, or whatever the fuck even applied to them. 

That was when the command centre exploded into real action again, instead of tense watching. Eva was politely asked to leave, since given they knew where Stark was now . . . 

She didn't bother to listen to the rest of it. Just stepped outside and stood out of the way and reflected that the earth had just been _attacked by fucking aliens_ and yet she felt disturbingly calm. 

About twenty minutes later, she had to work very hard not to laugh herself into hysterics when someone with an extremely important-looking uniform, and the SHIELD liaison both hurried over to find her, and ask her where the hell she thought Stark could possibly _be_ , given he wasn't on-site anywhere they could find, and nobody - including SHIELD's own agents who had been in the middle of it all - was answering their comms. 

Work very, very hard. 

It did take her a minute, above and beyond that effort. Not that thinking like Tony Stark when he was - presumably - completely out of his head on adrenaline and possibly pain, exhaustion and who knows what else was exactly difficult, it was just that it took you in _so many_ possible directions. Most people were limited by where their minds would go but in this kind of situation, Tony's mind would go _anywhere_. 

And he could talk people into going along with him. 

So it took a moment for her to sort through and eliminate all the possibilities based on trivial things like "but the NYPD would be able to find them that way" or "but that would make sense for a normal person, so it won't be that and besides they've probably already looked" and then to hone in, specifically, on what the hell might be rattling around inside his skull. 

Pepper would be better at this, and as far as Eva can tell Col Rhodes is a master, but neither of them was there, and she was. That's how these things go. 

" . . . try restaurants," she said, slowly. They stare at her. She shrugs. "What do you do after you've done a lot of work?" she said, mostly rhetorically. "You go get a beer and something appealing to eat. Look around for a restaurant somewhere in potential walking distance that's somehow still open. Or bars. Or something." 

In the end it turned out they'd gone to a little hole-in-the-wall shawarma place that had miraculously escaped intact and whose staff had hid in the basement instead of evacuating. And who'd been more than happy to turn things back on and feed the heroes of the city. When tasked on why, Tony had given the SHIELD liaison and the head of the NYPD a hostile look and apparently said, _Because. I wanted. Some fucking. Shawarma._

Then he'd been taken to the hospital because apparently his heart had stopped at some point, he had multiple bruised and broken ribs, several other fractures and a concussion. But the shawarma had apparently been much more important. 

 

It's been two weeks now and Eva's still unsettled by how well she's handling it. She keeps thinking there should at least be a sense of yawning imminent panic hanging over her shoulder, or something, but there isn't. At the worst, she has a strong sense of exasperation when she thinks about all the ways in which people could use this to mess the world up further, and that aliens couldn't have the decency to wait a few more decades, or possibly centuries, for them to get themselves sorted the fuck out first. 

This is probably in and of itself some kind of sign that she's a bit unhinged. She mentions that to Helena over breakfast the second Saturday after the Battle of New York, and her best friend gives her a long and patient look. 

"Eva," she says, over the top of the waffle-iron, "if you went to Hell you'd just start a working revolutionary party to force Satan into improving living conditions. If you went to Heaven, you'd launch an inquest into how exactly God justifies all of the evil He lets go on in the world. You're not freaking out because the existence of aliens and their apparently wanting to attack us changes exactly _nothing_ about your relationship with the universe. Unlike the rest of us plebes." 

Eva chucks a napkin at her. "Fine. Just you wait until you have to deal with my mental breakdown when all of the stuff I'm clearly in denial about catches up with me." 

Mono darts across the kitchen from the dining room to attack the napkin, which falls well short of Helena, and kill it extremely dead. 

"I'm not holding my breath. Besides," Helena adds, "I'm no better. I'm a classical soprano, either someone else is going to figure out how to save me from the aliens or I'm going to die horribly, so I've decided not to worry about it." She dishes out the waffle and hands the plate across the island to Eva. 

"How's that working out for you?" Eva asks, dryly, and Helena makes a face. 

"It's fine," she replies, a dire note in her voice. "I'm focused on panicking about Tosca and the fact that I _hate_ Thomas Randolf and hoping he gets hit by a car before I actually have to work with him. Or aliens. Aliens could take him out, if they wanted to do me a favour."

"Mm," Eva says, noncommittal. 

 

Her father says more or less the same thing, when they talk early - for her - the next morning. It sounds slightly more convincing, coming from him. 

But she can't say she disapproves of the plans for the rebuilt Tower that Stark and Pepper share with her, on her first day back at work. Or how effectively it turns that Tower into a fortress.


	3. Chapter 3

Pepper would be the first to admit that she’s not very good at taking time off if anyone ever asked her. They just never do, because . . . well, everyone already knows. 

She has two laptops and a tablet in front of her on the table and a mini-tablet in her lap when she hears the elevator chime as it opens. There's an immediate call of, "Excited cat incoming," from the elevator door in the living-room, heralding Eva's arrival and more importantly that of said excited cat: Pepper puts the mini-tablet down just in time to keep Mono from knocking it out of her hand when he leaps up over the back of the couch like he's made of helium and down into her lap to demand she pet him and let him smack his forehead against her face. 

It's affection, and Pepper kind of appreciates it. She likes Mono. She likes that having Mono around means she gets to have a cat sometimes without having to actually have a cat. Apparently some people get that way with kids, which much like anything to do with kids that does not involve hiding from them, Pepper will have to take on trust. 

She has nothing against them, intellectually speaking. It's just the experience of children that she objects to. 

But Mono is kind of a tornado with a tail. 

It isn't that the Bengal is more like a dog: he's still manifestly a cat. If anything he's even more intensely a cat than most cats. He's just got all the energy and sociability Pepper associates with over-excitable dogs, the kind that get neurotic and hyperactive if you don’t know how to handle them. Mono's not that bad, because Eva does know how to handle him. That doesn't make him calm. At all. 

By the time Eva's crossed the penthouse to come into the study (Tony insists it's not an office, it's a _study_ , although what the difference is Pepper has no idea), Mono's finished saying hello and has jumped down again to go investigate the bookshelves and see if the view from the top of them's changed since the last time he was here. And maybe if there’s something he can push off of them. Or, against all probability, toys and/or treats have mysteriously generated themselves. 

Eva follows a bit more sedately. And some things are very, very predictable, so Pepper's already raising both hands a bit defensively when her CLO raises one pointed eyebrow at the array of computers and tablets and the five or so paper files on the table beside them and says, " _You_ are supposed to be on medical leave, Ms Potts." 

From Eva, the formality is gently mocking; she doesn't stand on any kind of ceremony before sweeping the rest of the way in and commandeering the arm-chair that faces Pepper's chaise. You can tell when Evas relaxed around you, Pepper realized some time ago, by how she sits on couches and armchairs and that kind of furniture. If she's maintaining formality, she’ll sit with all the poise of a diplomat on a major assignment; if she's metaphorically let her hair down (something she almost never literally does, as far as Pepper can tell), she slides off her shoes and tucks up her knees and feet. Like she does now. 

"I am, I am," Pepper says. She drops her defensive hands and then says, because honesty compels her, "There's just a few things - "

Eva interrupts her with a snort. "Workaholic," she says, bluntly, which is both the absolute epitome of _pot calling kettle black_ but also not really a charge Pepper can defend herself against. But she tries anyway. 

"I'm not on the phone," she objects, "I'm not in my office, I'm up here at home in my sweats and I don't even have any makeup on and I didn't touch any of this stuff until after ten. Really I'm just keeping myself from developing cabin-fever." 

Another ironically raised eyebrow says Eva's not buying it. She probably shouldn't, Pepper has to admit to herself. Tony's not actually buying it either: she's never had so much "yes, dear" from him in her life and she might have to strangle him if he doesn't stop it - except that she is, actually, being a workaholic and he’s being very diplomatic about the yes-dear-ing and respecting her choices so she doesn't have a leg to stand on. 

Which is infuriating. 

Yolanda's also given her a telling off about work-life balance, in the very kind and considerate and infuriatingly wise way Yolanda has of giving you telling offs that don’t actually quite look like telling offs. Pepper had eventually staved that off by flat out saying that she _had_ a work-life balance, her work was her life, she'd come to terms with that years ago and given up, so that counts as balanced. 

Yolanda had given her a patient, empathetic look and told her she looked like hell and needed _rest_ so maybe she should reassess that particular set of terms. And then left it alone, because Yolanda also knows exactly when enough is enough and when it would be too much. It’s part of why Pepper has her where she does. 

Eva's leaning her head on one fist, elbow against the arm of the chair, and giving Pepper the look that says she sees through Pepper like a wet tissue, but she's going to leave it alone. Mono jumps back down from the top of the bookshelf - all in one leap, giving Pepper a minor heart attack - and trots back over to make a _mrrrt?_ noise, demanding that Eva reach down and pet him a few times. 

Mono had been the last of Eva's conditions when she agreed to come work for Stark Industries, after Pepper decided she wasn't actually resigning as CEO after all. He'd also been the most flip, or so it had seemed at the time. Serious, potentially contentious things - like _I have final say who does and doesn't work for Legal, not HR_ , the structure of the department, the right to the specific side-projects and details of budget and salary and all the rest - had been capped off with Eva's overly serious declaration of, "And my cat comes to work with me, so my office will need to be modified with enrichment for him." 

Pepper had signed off on that one with the same excessive solemnity, because frankly Eva could have demanded the entirety of Legal's wing be decorated in chartreuse polka-dots and Pepper would've still considered it a totally irrelevant detail compared to getting the woman to actually sign on. Hell the other stipulations mostly counted as the same thing, especially after Eva’d finished explaining how they'd work. 

But Pepper'd also sort of assumed it was entirely a joke, a little play and display at being a prima donna, and not much more. 

A few months later, when the awkwardness had worn off, Pepper had mentioned that while Eva absently directed a laser-pointer all over the place to keep Mono amused while she and Pepper went over the agenda for a meeting. Eva'd laughed ruefully, glanced at the miniature panther who’d just done a somersault trying to kill a little patch of light, and said, "No, not really. I swear it's as bad as having a Jack Russell terrier, except it's a cat instead of a dog, so nobody believes you." 

When Pepper'd been a kid, one of her friends' brothers got a Siberian husky but didn't keep it active enough to keep it from getting bored and neurotic and completely ripping apart furniture, walls, garden and anything else it could get its teeth into until the parents made him give it up. Apparently Bengal cats were more or less the same, just smaller and more likely to get into corners you really didn't want them to get into. 

So Eva's office is also a very tastefully designed cat obstacle course and jungle-gym, and Mono comes in to work with her in a harness most days. 

Pepper's still surprised at how much she likes him. It's almost like someone managed to create Tony, but in cat-form. Complete with the tendency to destroy things and then look startled and guilty and hide under something else. 

For now, Mono deigns to jump up and sit on Eva's lap, as she gives Pepper a level look again. "So," she asks. "Are we crushing the DoD _pour encourager les aûtres_ , or are we just going to hold it over Washington's head that we ever-so-reasonably didn't for the next hundred years?" 

Some people would probably disapprove of being that flippant about the whole thing, Pepper thinks, but frankly it's a relief. Eva's not flip because she's not taking this seriously, after all, and there's a _reason_ Pepper decided to have this meeting and this discussion in the most informal setting she could possibly think up bar some spa somewhere, and while it's been a couple weeks and she's no longer faced with never wanting to leave the Tower _again_ . . . that still doesn't actually appeal. 

If they talked about it in the office, if they talked about it like it's serious, if Pepper were even properly _dressed_ right now or if Harker were here . . . it would all be serious. And Pepper can't take that yet. If they talk about it like this, though, like they're just two . . . _people_ even though they're also everything else they are and can't get away from, then maybe she can think her way through it. 

This is probably a perfect example of why she's supposedly on medical leave, she has to admit. 

Pepper spent nearly the first week after the "incident" (as it was so euphemistically being called) either sleeping or otherwise trying not to freak out, or in various labs in the Tower with Betty and Bruce and Tony all trying to make her feel more comfortable with being a science experiment and also trying to explain it to her in language she can grasp, with mixed success. She started to feel slightly better about that after Betty brought in two assistants who also had to have things broken down for them more than once. It made her feel less stupid. 

After the week had passed, Betty (even Tony would admit it was mostly Betty) came up with something to inject Pepper with which she swears is a temporary ongoing inhibitor for the Extremis virus. It's not the end-game, and Betty has to inject it every seventy-two hours or so, but it's better than straight-up living in terror of the moment that everything goes off-balance and Pepper explodes, killing everyone around her. 

Since then Tony called in another super-genius geneticist from Seoul, a really brilliant woman named Helen Cho (or at least, that was the name she gave Pepper - Pepper sort of suspected it was a self-selected English name to give out to keep from hearing her real one mangled all the time) who for some reason Pepper cannot even begin to imagine is friends with Tony, on purpose, and was even before Afghanistan. She and Betty have been holed up and Pepper has a feeling even Tony and Bruce are occasionally struggling to keep up with them, and they insist to Pepper that they will have this _solved_. 

Helen had graciously allowed that Tony's work-slash-insight on the way the energy was working - or something, Pepper wouldn't swear to that being right, but she thinks she grasped that much - is absolutely central to taking Extremis away from the Nightmare it is, but that the question of how to make that mean anything in terms of the actual modifications to human cells is "serious work for grownups, not dilettantes" and then gone back to talking to Betty. 

Tony's effort to stay mature and take that gracefully had been really obvious in everything about him. Bruce's effort not to dissolve into hysterical amusement had also been really obvious. Pepper'd decided that was her cue to go get a coffee. 

But until that got sorted out, Pepper's on medical leave, which . . . means she's working from home, she admits, aka the Tower, and this meeting is one of the things she set up for after Eva said she had blocking the Pentagon's attempts to insist that Tony had to hand over the Extremis formula to them, immediately, in hand. 

There had apparently been an honest to god moment of Eva demanding of someone involved _are you fucking kidding me right now? No, this is a completely serious, completely genuine question: are. you. fucking. kidding me. right. now?_ But it was handled. And now they have to decide where to go from here. 

They have grounds, if they do want to basically grind everyone responsible or even vaguely connected to AIM's contracts with the DoD (and the Vice President's office, and everyone else they care to catch in the collateral damage) into powder. They have more than grounds. They have grounds, ammunition and . . . she can't think of another part to the metaphor, but the point is they could do it. 

Stark Industries has some of the best private investigators in the world on payroll. And it didn't take them very long to find the smoking guns and the breadcrumb trails and if Pepper gives the go-ahead this could make Watergate look like an internet flamewar. 

Eva's still waiting; she's leaning her head on her fist again, the other hand idly stroking her cat. The thought crosses Pepper's mind, more than a little whimsically, that Eva would make a fantastic evil overlord. Lady. 

Whatever. 

Pepper puts one hand over her face for a second, trying to think and to stop herself from getting distracted. Eventually she drags it down over the bridge of her nose, her cheeks, her jaw, and lets it fall in her lap. 

"You think we should stay out of court and use it as leverage," she says, because now that Eva's _right there_ , that's somehow obvious in a way it wasn't, two hours ago with Eva somewhere else. 

"Absolutely," Eva says, without hesitation. "Aiming for complete control over any upgrades, alterations or improvements to Col Rhodes' armour from hereon out, no renegotiation, just to _start_ with." 

Pepper nods slowly, turning that over. Eva goes on, "After all, this is twice they've let someone else mess with proprietary technology, technology which _they stole_ outright, and which we let them keep out of the goodness of our hearts in the _first place_. Twice, now, that their actions have lead to the armour being compromised by terrorists bent on the destruction of this country, _not to mention_ twice that it has caused significant civillian casualties, and only been kept from costing significant civillian _lives_ because of actions taken personally by Mr Stark, at _extraordinary_ risk to life and limb." 

Pepper smiles slightly. "I think Agent Romanoff and Rhodey have helped a little," she says, with mild irony. "And JARVIS, this time." 

Eva makes a _pfft_ sound and waves that away with the hand petting Mono - which Mono protests, so she goes back to petting him. 

"Details," she says, dismissively. "You think Yolanda can't spin that for the media, you've forgotten who works for you. But that's still just to start with, when it comes to what we could do with this if we don't take it to the courts - not to mention," Eva adds, "having it to throw on the scales in the future." 

She pauses for a second and then says, maybe a little gently, "You want to burn them down." 

You never realize just how many of the ways English uses to talk about anger and violence have to do with fire until it gets personal, Pepper reflects. Or she didn't, anyway. She leans back against the arm of the divan and lets her breath out in a puff that ruffles her bangs.

"Eva," she says, honestly, "I'm still just praying Betty Ross is right and the temporary stabilizer does mean I won't accidentally turn into a violent demon bitch from _Hell_ because I lost my temper at Tony. Or stubbed my toe. Or I could just explode! Because hey it just so happens that this is also a possibility! I don't even _know_ what I want. I sure as fuck don't know how what I want relates to what I should actually do." 

Eva nods, looking genuinely serious and thoughtful for a moment. Mono, apparently bored with lying still, gets up, stretches and jumps down, trotting away into one of the other rooms. There's technically stuff he could break, knock over or run into, but right now Pepper doesn't really care. And Eva doesn't really react to his going. 

More than once Pepper's thought that Tony's really lucky she genuinely isn't into women. It's not that he'd've lost her to Eva, not as such, but he sure as hell would have been a lot more insecure. Very, very few men can make him insecure, but if Pepper had any romantic interest in women whatsoever, Eva would be the worst thing that ever happened to his ego. 

And an insecure Anthony Stark is nobody's friend, especially not his own. But definitely nobody else's either. 

There's a magnetism to Eva de los Santos that's a lot like Tony's, when you think about it, and in her own field she has to be at least as brilliant. And she's brilliant _like_ Tony's brilliant, has the same spark of _something more_. Anyone smart enough who works hard enough can get very, very good at engineering, or very good at the law, but what they bring is an uncanny ability to make exactly the right connections at the right times - the right arguments or equations, the right memory of this or that or the other precedent, the right picture in your head, putting all of it together . . . 

With Tony it's the kind of thing that lets him figure out how to miniaturize technology his father gave up on as a dead end, in a cave under torture; Eva does the same kind of thing, except with the law and how people see things in court-rooms. 

Here and now, she's pursing her lips slightly and looking thoughtful. She's fairly casual today: the only makeup she's wearing is the kind that ignorant people (in other words, most men) think means you're "not wearing makeup", the - Pepper sighs - price of admission for being a woman, most of the time. It feels like it, anyway. 

It means that Pepper can see the patch of skin by Eva's left eye that's ever so slightly lighter than the warm brown of the rest. According to Eva, paternal cousins had hit her with a stick the cousin'd been poking in the fire, and while the burn had healed and there wasn't that much of a scar, the skin there seemed like an odd patch, off and pale. 

On any day Eva's going to do anything other than sit in the office, it's invisible. But not today. 

And wow, Pepper thinks, watch her brain just try its goddamn hardest to think about anything other than what's under discussion. That's pretty fucking impressive.

(But she notices Eva left the eyeliner off today, too.)

"Well," Eva says eventually, still thoughtful, using her right thumb to turn the ring on her right ring-finger around and around. "My formal advice would in fact be against dropping the bomb on them, now, over this, and using it instead. It's Washington," she elaborates with a sigh, sitting up and then frowning at the fur Mono left on her lap. She brushes at it as she talks. "There's going to be enough slimy bastards who manage to slip through the edges to make going after them less satisfying than you want it to be, anyway, and the last thing anyone in this country needs right now is _more_ chaos in DC. I think we'd all be better off if Ellis gets his shit back together, and us going after him and his with a big hammer isn't going to give him any time to do that." 

"That makes sense," Pepper says, closing her eyes and trying to make sure it really does. And it does. It doesn't do anything for the part of her that just wants to attack and attack and attack and break things until the whole feeling that she's constantly trying to stand on crumbling ground fucks _off_ , but that part of her shouldn't be doing the thinking anyway. She doesn't like thinking with that part of her. 

Fuck. She pinches the bridge of her nose. 

She never thought she was this person. She doesn't like being this person. 

After a second Eva says, "Pepper," and Pepper has to blink her eyes open to look at her. And immediately feels her shoulders go tense at the sympathetic-but-firm look on Eva's face. 

"You're on medical leave," Eva says, and Pepper grimaces and rubs a hand over her face. "No, wait till I'm done -" Eva interrupts her, holding up a hand. "Seriously, you're on medical leave and you're on medical leave _for a reason_. I know you don't like the reason and I know you don't like being on leave. You met me right after my knee surgery, you know I get that."

Pepper grimaces again, but can't argue. Eva continues, "You're _tired_. You also don't need to be here right now. The board is the board, Jameson is a miserable shit, and I realize that, but it's not like you're really under threat from them - you know that. Hell, Pepper, Stane set the whole thing _up_ so that the board could never be a real threat, and okay so he did it because he was an evil piece of shit but you inherited the benefit, given it's not like Howard Stark would have ever taken the company public to start with. It's not like the board can't be handled, and it's not even like they can't be held off for a couple weeks with minimal work."

It's all true. Of course it's true. Pepper knows it's true.

"Trust me," Eva adds dryly, "if need be I can keep them so completely fucking entangled in procedure and bylaws that they can't change their underwear, let alone call a meeting they could do anything with, so all they're going to do is write emails full of hot air and belligerence, and need to be put back on their heels when you come back. Rested. And healthy." 

"Yeah, right," Pepper says, and her voice is sour whether she wants it to be or not, "and what am _I_ going to do if I'm not working?" 

"Learn how to ride horses," Eva says promptly, and then when Pepper stares at her she adds, "I'm completely serious. Horses are very calming, you can read up on equine psychology, it's good physical activity, and you can't do it from, oh, the Tower, where work is _right there_ and tempting. And it's not like we can't send a helicopter for you the second the scientific dream team sorts treatment out to their satisfaction." 

"You sound like Tony," Pepper says, which is a bit of a low blow. "Except he wants me to take up yoga." 

"Well god knows even a stopped clock is right twice a day," Eva retorts, and that's a good answer, "and you could always do both - actually my cousin's wife teaches yoga, so that might be a great idea, I think it's part of their program. Then come back and grind everyone under your heel. You wear the right kind of heels." 

"I'll think about it," Pepper says, and if it's a dodge the look Eva gives her is knowing and says she knows. And that she's ignoring it completely. 

"I'll send you my cousin's email and phone number," Eva says. "He's the one who has the equine therapy ranch. It's just upstate, you'll love it - he's an amazing cook, too." 

"I said I'll think about it!" Pepper protests. Eva merely makes an _mmhm_ noise. 

Mono decides to come back and jump up the back of Pepper's chaise again, and demand to be petted.


	4. Chapter 4

Eva reads the memo from Tony and then, for a moment, she sits back in her chair and just looks at it. Takes it in. 

She wonders, briefly, if she should print and frame it. Perhaps put it in a particularly decorative font, maybe get one of the people in Design to put it in a nice kind of layout, with different sizes or moments of emphasis, and then put it in an ornate frame. She might add a plaque that says something like _the quintessential stark_. 

After a few more seconds she actually adds a note to the effect to her personal Reminders list, to think about when she's less whimsically gripped by the desire to send him back an email saying _what the hell is wrong with you, Anthony? I mean what?_ and see if she still thinks it's a good idea. 

Wanting to send him that email is her best indicator that she needs to think about anything associated with the moment a bit more, when the feeling has past. Among other things, she _knows_ what's wrong with Anthony Edward Stark. In fact, she's relatively sure that she could approximate an actual diagnosis, given reference to Wikipedia for the technical terms. He also knows what's wrong with him. That email would be pointless. 

One could also say it would be unprofessional, but that's a concept with limited usefulness around Tony Stark. As his memo - or perhaps, "memo" - illustrates. 

It reads: 

_eva_

_thor's back on earth, planning to stay for a while, currently in london, definitely needs to sort out some way he can travel internationally without risking war/going to jail/being deported (might end up with same thing as 'war' really if you think about it) like a normal person but without being all PRINCE OF ASGARD all over the place all the time because that's a drag, could you sort it out, thanks_

_tony_

The thing is, you can't actually find fault with it for content. It does, Eva thinks, basically have everything that matters, everything she really needs to know. Shaping it in anything like professional language wouldn't actually change a damn thing about the content, about what she needs to do, or even make it easier. Nobody is more aware than she is that the forms and shapes of things only have any value or meaning when imbued with that value and meaning by the people using them, and she can't even argue that he should be imbuing them with said meaning and thus following them with her because she cares. 

It's just . . . .

It's that it's also _a run on sentence_. 

The other thing is, Eva isn't angry, or even insulted. She just . . . thinks this might be the most quintessentially _Tony Stark_ thing she's ever gotten from him, and all things considered _that's saying something_ , so she might just need to frame it. 

But that might count as encouraging him. 

What Eva actually does, for now, is get up, find Mono, clip him back into his harness and leash and take him on a trip to go find some kulfi from Contemplative Tiger, which is now officially her favourite of the places in the Tower that offers food, beverage or other things to consume. 

She gets talked into trying the new experimental chai variety that Maniram's experimenting with, Mono gets his attention and his treats from everyone behind the counter and in the little booths, and then she walks back to her office with a brief stop-over to check in with one of her people who's supervising an intern project and seems overwhelmed by the difficulties of shepherding seven just-barely-twenty-year-old university kids. Even very dedicated, focused university kids. 

That's more or less why Eva gave him the project. He needs the practice, and this is a perfectly safe place for him to get it. 

Then she goes back to her office and calls her former classmate at the Icelandic Embassy. 

 

Six and a half hours later, she sends Tony a return message, CC'd to both Pepper and to Dr Jane Foster, whose email took only a very brief Google to find, so that Eva didn't even bother to bother her assistant about it. 

There are a number of other documents attached, but she summarizes in the body of the message: 

_In short, there is an expectation of universal approval in the Althing of Thor Odinsson's being granted Icelandic citizenship by act of parliament, if he would be so kind as to go and accept this grant in person and attend a celebration et cetera. Airfare and accommodations would of course be covered, further et cetera. Dr Foster is absolutely welcome, nay encouraged, urged, to accompany him and there was a distinct hint from my colleague that there may be an honourary something-or-other._

_The attached files include contact information: call and set up a time to stop by the Icelandic Embassy in London, and they'll sort everything else out with you._

She's rather appalled that Dr Foster seems to be _awake_ : it's less than twenty minutes before she gets effusive thanks, plus apologies for bothering her, plus a note hoping that Tony didn't bother her (Eva takes a second look and no, the woman hasn't hit Reply All, that's a blessing) and more effusive thanks on Thor Odinsson's behalf. Eva assures her it's no trouble, and wishes her a good night. 

Because she's not going to say it anywhere that makes a permanent record, especially on only semi-secured email, but frankly Eva has the strong impression that they've just helped Iceland score a significant status victory in terms of the other Nordic Council member-states, and that this is only the smallest part of how happy everyone is about this option. 

After all, Astríd's first breathless words when Eva broached the whole issue had been _please, please, please do not be fucking kidding me right now. Please tell me you're serious._

And then there'd been a moment or two of a squeeing joyful noise at one remove, like Astríd was holding the phone away from her so it wouldn't shriek in Eva's ear, followed by a quick, _I will call you_ right back _please stand by._

When Tony does in fact send her a separate email demanding how she even knows people who arrange Icelandic citizenship, however, Eva does give in to brief childishness and the nature of their complex relationship, and replies, _Because I have social skills, Anthony._

He retorts, _Ah. I hire people for that._ Which is really quite foolish of him, because it's hard to top her return of _I know_ without it being very, very obvious that he's trying for the last word. He opts not to embarrass himself, apparently - there's no subsequent email. 

Eva smiles slightly to herself, and gets back to real work before Helena calls her at around seven pm to remind her that she doesn't live in her office and to get the hell out of it.


	5. Chapter 5

The entire day is video-conferencing with stupid, reactionary people, and Pepper doesn't kill anyone, which should earn her some kind of medal. 

She is, she will absolutely admit, a little on edge. Most of it is rational, but a little bit isn't, that bit coming from the part that doesn't care about the actual situation, context and logistics of people being murdered _in her building_ and someone managing to turn the external connections off because they managed to plant a saboteur right in the middle of her own fucking company, and how none of those apply anymore and how actually even in the moment of crisis she, personally, had still been perfectly safe from everything except the Insight carriers because there was no way at all to take the building out of JARVIS' control. 

_That_ part of her is making things a little bit difficult, and her rein on her temper a little . . . brittle. 

So when Pepper gets done, finally gets up to the fucking penthouse, and finds Tony - who is _supposed_ to be in the infirmary, God-fucking-damn it - standing half-sitting on a stool by the bar with a serious look on his face, she is already not in the mood. 

When he says, "Pepper. We need to talk about something," she snorts. 

"Yeah, later," she says. "I am so done with today." 

Tony shakes his head. "I know," he says, "but not later. Now. We need to talk now." 

That is not what she wants to hear. There is exactly zero percent of her that wants to deal with Tony being fucking difficult right now and that, that is a warning sign of Tony Being Difficult right there. She does not want that. God fucking damn it - 

Pepper bites her tongue on her first response and takes a deep breath. Because she also doesn't want to actually be an unreasonable bitch which she is well aware that she could very easily be. That's the fun part of being a human being, after all. Just because your feelings are an understandable reaction to the situation, doesn't mean they're _right_.

God she fucking hates trying to be a basically mature and fair adult sometimes. Like right now. 

"Okay," she says, evenly, trying to be fair and also trying to make sure that it's clear she is _so fucking done_ and she really does not have the energy for him pulling attention-seeking bullshit right now. Just in case. "I have spent _all day_ juggling metaphorical chainsaws and fending off donkey-fucking idiots from Washington who are all trying to look really busy, efficient and aggressive so that nobody thinks that hold-over Nazis nearly blowing us all off the face of the earth is _their_ fault - " and she holds up her hand to stop Tony from interrupting her, " - and my head hurts, and I'm hungry for something that isn't mediocre crap dressed up in fancy plating to pretend that it's gourmet, so I am asking you, really and truly: can this wait? Because I really, _really_ want it to wait, Tony." 

When Tony says, "No," quietly, it's not what she wants to hear. It's not. 

And the thing is, she's ninety-percent sure that this is going to end with her getting pissed off because he has once again slipped and completely fucking failed to understand the thousands of ways that the world, even her world, does not revolve around him. Despite everything she's already thought, she almost goes with that ninety-percent and says _well too fucking bad_ and delegates dealing with Tony's shit-fit to Future Pepper. Future Pepper wouldn't thank her, but Future Pepper would deal with him after at least a few hours of sleep. 

Ninety percent of her feels that, and almost carries the day. 

Ten percent of her slams the veto button in her brain, steps hard on her mental foot, smacks her on the hand, and points out that Tony looks like shit, looks like even his stubborn thick skull would rather be on his pillow, sleeping, like the doctors keep telling him he needs to do. He looks that miserable. She has seen him so hung-over a normal person would be dead, and not looking this miserable. 

And on top of looking like shit, he looks . . . 

He looks scared. 

Tony looks _scared_. Somehow. 

That ten percent of her follows up the foot-stomp with a mental elbow and says, _he looks scared_. And that stops her flat. 

Not verge-of-disaster nervous, no. Not "oh shit I did something and it blew up in my face." Not any of the stuff she knows so well, but that kind of profound, world-upending existential (is it existential? she is too tired to remember) chest gnawing terror that says something is wrong, and really upsetting, and he doesn't know what to do. That she's only seen a few times and that's still more than she wants to. 

And if he's looking like that, either it really is important, or he's so completely messed up again that something unimportant feels that important in which case it may become that important because he's _out of his mind_ , "hello I have forty-two suits and this one accidentally responds to my night-terror panic by trying to kill you since you're the only possible threat in the room" style, and does she really want to deal with it _after_ it's all blown to hell? 

Both possibilities are awful. She doesn't want either of them. But apparently the universe still doesn't care. 

Putting her hands over her face, Pepper takes a deep breath. "Okay," she says. "This is what's going to happen. And don't even think about arguing with me. What's going to happen is, I'm going to go get changed, and get a beer." It's a compromise, but probably one that's really necessary if she isn't actually going to kill him. "Then I'll come back out. And then you can tell me. Okay?" 

The way he says, "Okay," worries her. Worries her a lot. 

It's quiet and agreeable and he doesn't even try to argue. He should really have argued. It would be much more _normal_ for Tony if he argued. Or if he at least looked annoyed, or frustrated, or put upon. He should not be this insistent about needing to talk to her right now and then accept a reasonable-for-human-normal delay of her getting changed and getting a beer. That's not how Tony works. 

And she really, really fucking hopes he hasn't . . . done something. 

She can't even think what he could have done, but she hopes he hasn't anyway. 

But there's no point or even way to say any of that out loud. So Pepper inhales slowly, exhales, says, "Okay, I'll be right back," and heads to the bedroom and the blessed fucking prospect of sweats, a fucking t-shirt and slippers and _no goddamn bra_. 

She almost just drops her clothes on the floor where she takes them off, but some vestige of life-long habits forces her to pick them up and lay them over the chaise instead. But she does just kick her shoes in the general direction of the closet and ignore them. They can just fucking wait for either tomorrow or for the housekeepers. 

A sense of responsibility makes her put the jewelry away properly, because it's good jewelry, but that's about as far as that goes. 

She washes her face and gets rid of her bra, and pulls the first shirt she can find in the pj-drawer over her head. Which, of course, turns out to be an Ironette-print tank, because she has those for some reason. She'll probably remember why later. 

She almost changes it but it's soft and she doesn't care and if Tony's obnoxious about it at least she'll have something to get mad about. 

That is so not the kind of thought she likes hearing herself think, for any reason. But that's the kind of day it's been. 

She pulls on a pair of soft sweats and can't find her slippers. After thirty seconds of looking she still can't find them, so she gives up, curses all slippers under her breath and grabs a hair-stick because suddenly her hair on her neck is the most annoying thing in the world. 

Then she goes back out to the living-room via the kitchen, twisting her hair up and ramming the stick through it as she goes, so she can pull a Stella out of the fridge. She keeps her Stella there because Tony makes annoying arch comments about it if she keeps it in the bar fridge, or did before she moved it. She's mostly sure he took that to mean she really was getting fed up with the beer snobbery, exactly as she meant him to. But who knows. She hasn't tested by moving it back to the bar fridge because to be honest she's lazy and forgets about it, because it's not that important. 

If Tony gives her shit about her taste in beer, it will be the second thing she rips a strip off of him for. 

That thought sort of gets lost because he's actually right where she left him: half-sitting against the bar-stool, arms folded, staring blankly at the floor. He hasn't moved. He just . . .stayed there, and waited for her to come back. 

The wrong note in the symphony of expectation is so jarring that it actually turns her preemptive aggravation down several points, and turns her annoyed stalk into something else as she goes to the bar and gets the bottle-opener. 

After a second or two, Tony either finally notices she came in or works himself up to reacting, one or the other, and takes a breath. It's like he's bracing himself. 

Except the thing that doesn't make any sense is that anything Pepper can think of - and oh boy has the back of her head been thinking fast and furious as this goes on - that would be this . . . dire . . .they're all things that would be . . . emergencies. Shit would need to already be happening. He wouldn't just be standing there waiting for her to listen. It doesn't make sense: anything this much of an emergency would be too much of an emergency to be this calm over. 

This is not helping Pepper's calm. 

"Rogers called me this afternoon. Steve Rogers," Tony says, in a voice that isn't quite soft but is kind of . . . subdued. "Captain America." He unfolds one arm just enough to make a little _whatever, you know the guy_ gesture. 

"Why?" Pepper asks, deciding she doesn't even care enough to get a glass and going back around towards the couches, chaise and ottomans in their little conversational circle. Because she's going to fucking sit down. Curl up comfortably even. 

God she hates Washington. 

"Asked for help finding someone. Figured I might . . . know people, know how to search for someone's trail, that kind of thing. I said sure, I've got JARVIS looking some stuff up now and then Rogers and his new friend are gonna head over here tomorrow from his friend's place in DC, take a look, I'll . . .talk to Bruce, I think, he did a lot of trying to stay off people's radars but Rogers - " Tony stops and takes a breath and says, "well he, ah, told me some stuff and I need to talk to you about it." 

It seems so fucking inane. It makes the part where this is all confusing even worse. But Pepper pushes the annoyance aside, reminds herself to _look_ at him, at how he's still pulled in and got his arms folded. And also reminds herself that he hasn't really had a better day, or week, or even month, than she has. Maybe worse, actually. 

She's not actually sure she'd swap places with him, given the malaria does really seem to have kicked him all to shit. She's never had malaria. She has no desire to get it. It sucks. It might actually be worse than dealing with all of this shit she's fielding. 

She reminds herself of all of that. 

"Okay," she says, in a _so go on_ voice, as she veers towards the chaise and he stands up from the bar-stool. 

Tony takes another deep breath and looks at her and then at the ceiling like it's going to give him a prompt or a cue. Then he gets the look Tony always gets when his thoughts are going so much faster than even he can talk, the one where he has to make them stop to find out where the fuck he should even start. So it takes a second before he says, "So you know . . .the thing. With Switzerland. The mission. I mean with Captain America," he elaborates, as if that helps. "Back in World War II. The one where everything went wrong." 

" . . .no," Pepper says, bluntly. She'd stopped to stand and look at him while he gave her sentence fragments that he clearly thought meant something, and didn't. He looks blank, and then frowns - not in disapproval, just in bewilderment. 

"You don't - ?" he starts, sounding totally non-plussed. Pepper makes an effort to neither scream nor laugh hysterically nor throw the beer at him and rage. She really wants to go to bed. She _really_ wants to go to bed. 

"Tony," she says, dropping into the chaise like the weight she feels on her shoulders is literal, and speaking very carefully to keep the edges away, "the last time I payed any fucking attention to World War II history, the biggest worry in my life was how to stop Tod Belcher from sticking his hand up my skirt, because my teacher would not stop making us be study partners. So no, I don't know about the thing with Captain America in Switzerland - are you _sure_ ," she asks, letting this turn a little plaintive, "this is that important? Like Jesus Tony, World War II?" 

Tony's looking at her like he doesn't even know how to go on from here, from this. He draws a hand down his face, and looks like he almost says something at least three times before stopping and exhaling all at once. "JARVIS, can you . . . " he says. 

"Certainly, sir," JARVIS replies. 

And the thing is - 

The thing is. 

The thing. 

There's this . . . hole. Where she doesn't remember. 

JARVIS starts to talk. Started to talk. There are words, were words, a lot of words. Lots of explanation. But there's this big blank hole where she knows that he talked and told her this but she doesn't, she doesn't really remember it. Never remembers it. Not the moment. Never really _remembers_

Pepper doesn't remember hearing JARVIS explain about the mission in Switzerland, about James Barnes falling off the train into hideous death as personified by a rocky mountain canyon, and - unsurprisingly - being presumed dead. 

She doesn't remember Tony explaining that Steve Rogers just told him that actually it turns out that James Barnes - his best friend, his _best_ friend, the word used the way Tony talks about Rhodey and vice versa and meaning a lot more than most people understood - didn't die, fell hundreds and hundreds of feet down a canyon full of jagged rocks with a river at the bottom in the freezing fucking snow and _didn't die_ , because he'd already been used as HYDRA's lab rat back in the factory in Austria, and they'd done something to him that nobody knew about, or understood, or expected, so he survived at the bottom of the fucking canyon, broken on the snow. Body broken, head probably broken, arm broken off, everything broken but alive. 

Frozen and broken and alive.

That HYDRA's plants in the Soviet army found him. And everything after. Everything after that. 

She knows JARVIS told her, Tony told her. They had to, they had to have told her, because now she _knows_ all of it. Knows they told her. 

But she doesn't _remember_ them telling her, just knows it like someone read her a story about it once, like it came out in a memo or a briefing or fucking something, because it's like somehow, in the middle, somehow right when she hit the moment where she really understood what Tony was trying to tell her, what Rogers told him, what _happened_ , and in that moment as she hit that knowledge something in her head started _screaming_ and somehow it fucking screamed backwards in time and whited out the whole thing so it's just the noise. Just the scream. 

Just the _fucking screaming._

Just the screaming, and the feeling under her skin again, like she can _feel_ Extremis inside her crawling under her skin like somehow it's a thousand fucking _insects_ all _inside her_ but not, pushed between skin and everything else and she wants to throw up? Maybe? She thinks she wants to throw up?

Except you can't throw up your entire insides and that's what she feels like she wants to do so she can _scour it clean_. Or peel everything off and take steel wool to the underside to get _rid of that fucking feeling_ and she can't because that's not how inside you works, you are all one thing you are not actually a pot full of _person_ like your skin is the container and you are inside it's all one thing from the top to bottom so you cannot actually scrape the contamination away, you can't scour the poison out but oh _god_ she fucking wants to. 

That, and the screaming. And knowing everything she can't remember being told. 

Pepper realizes she's standing up. She doesn't remember moving from the chaise, but she did. She's standing up and over by the window and she's looking out the window over the night-time lights of the city and Tony's saying her name. 

Her face is tingling, pins and needles. 

She can feel the needles in her arm. 

She can feel the injection. She can feel the fucking restraints. She can see Killian's _face_ and she wants to _claw it off his skull with her own fucking hands_ , dig her fingernails into the skin under his eye-sockets and _pull_ \- 

Tony's saying her name. 

Pepper turns around to look at him and she actually . . . hears him, processes what he's saying, understands the words, " _Pepper_ \- are you okay?" 

The answer to that is clearly no. There's just enough of her that can think, far away and cool, that she can tell that she is not at all okay, and more or less what that means. She is not okay. 

She doesn't feel like she's drunk, not . . . exactly, it's like, she can't, it's like the _photo-negative_ of drunk, the same impairment but all the colours and tones reversed and eerie and inhuman. It's worse. She would rather be drunk. Oh fuck she would rather be drunk oh god. 

And she's looking at Tony and he's looking at her, and everything she was seeing in his face before isn't there now, is replaced by the frown that says he's worried about her. The part of her that's far away and cool is . . . less cool now, because it's laughing in a shrill way, and thinking that hey - at least that's less unsettling than before. She hates Tony's worried-about-her face, but it's not unnerving. Just annoying. 

Oh god. 

" . . . no," she says. She surprises herself by saying. "I don't - I'm not okay." 

Pepper's thoughts stall out. Her head - she can't think? She feels so stupid and slow. Like there aren't really thoughts in her head, not _thoughts_. 

It's like it's in her body not in her head it's. . . pictures and feelings, memories and _hatred_ , she _hates_ she doesn't . . .even know what she hates? That's, those thoughts are too hard but she does she wants to hit and hit and hit until it's dead but she doesn't know what and she doesn't really want to she just wants to stop feeling like this. 

Tony's hands are on her forearms. Her hands were . . . on her face? Going to her face? Now Tony's pulling her arms down, gently, and pulling her over to wrap her up in his and fuck, fuck, she needs to get a grip? And he's there, solid, body-heat against her, arms around her back and her waist. Cologne. She can smell his. Only his. Nobody else has it, the stupid perfumer made it _for him_ because god forbid someone else smell like Tony Stark but it means he's right here, one more guarantee. Cologne and coffee and the edge of alcohol. Tony. Tony, all wrapped up in one smell. 

It's the Tower. All around her. This is the Tower. They're in the Tower this is a _fortress_ nobody is coming in here who isn't allowed and JARVIS will kill anyone who tries before Tony even has to think about doing it himself. This is the Tower. They're both here. They're both safe. Killian is _dead_ and she _fucking killed him_ and Tony and Betty and Helen and Bruce rewrote the Extremis inside her so it can't do fucking anything, so it _helps_ , and Tony is right here, holding onto her, and there isn't even a stupid fucking glass and metal circle in his chest anymore. 

It's okay. She is _okay_. She is not okay but she can be okay. This is the Tower, she is here, Tony is here, it can be okay. Okay. 

And she clings to that. And inside her head it turns around and from there, from clinging to that, safe with that she has to look at everything she knows now, to know what Tony just told her what Tony - JARVIS? _someone_ just told her the things she knows now, about a man. 

She has to see that. The part of her that knows. The knowing. the knowledge. She has to look at it. That she knows it. 

That she knows that a man hit the fucking ground in a fucking canyon in the snow and they already, they had him fucking strapped to the table before and they changed him, mangled him, violated him, already did that to him and then, and then he got out and then after he hit the canyon floor they took him again. And they kept him they kept him and he couldn't get away this time and they - 

It feels like Extremis isn't fixed. It feels like inside of her is _burning_ that was the last time she was this angry and she knows she can't burn now, can't turn into fire and hurt Tony but it feels like she should be able to, how dare they how _fucking dare_ she will _kill them_ \- 

She wants to scream. Wants to scream until it stops being true because _how fucking dare they_ but it's already done and she can't, she can't make it not have happened she can't even make it not have happened to _her_ , her body, couldn't get away herself _then -_

The feeling like she wants to cry swells up in her throat and she swallows it. Sort of. Ends up gasping instead. A kind of gasping sob. Because she couldn't get away but - 

She couldn't get away, but someone came. For her, someone came. Tony came. Rhodey, Rhodey came too but Tony came for her, stupid _clusterfuck_ mess Tony but he came, he could come, he knew and he would rewrite the whole fucking world and he did, and maybe it almost didn't work but he came and he would have died trying and then, then _she_ -

\- but for this man, nobody came, nobody could come, nobody _knew_ \- 

Fuck. 

She can't breathe. She needs to breathe. She needs to . . . make her brain work. 

_Think, Pepper. Think. Stop. Stop you're fucking scaring Tony, you're scaring him, and he told you this for a reason and it wasn't this so fucking think._

She tells herself this. Over and over. Maybe if she says it enough she'll listen.

_Stop. Think. Stop. You're safe. Stop it. You're home. You're Pepper fucking Potts, you're in the Tower, you're in the fucking modern castle you are safer than the fucking President and the Queen of England put together, you have more money than you can even_ understand _, you own a fucking private army, you are fine, you will fucking stop panicking and_ think.

It only kind of works. 

But it works . . . enough. 

Pepper realizes she's crying. She makes herself stop. Drags her breathing back under control, wills the tears to stop. She brings one hand up to wipe her eyes, turns her head against Tony's shoulder and forces herself to think. 

"Okay," she says. Clears her throat to get the crackle out of her voice, pulls away from Tony enough to talk. "Okay," she says, "what are we - what are we doing about this?" 

It's the only question that matters. There are probably other questions, she realizes. Tony probably expects other questions, or maybe he expects her to skip the questions and go right to the arguments? That train of thought, that track, she can't quite get a hold of where it would end because it's so fucking . . . it's impossible, it's wrong, but something does try to tell her that you could expect her not to - 

That he might be expecting something else. 

But it's still the only question that matters. 

Tony blinks. She wipes at her eyes again. Thinks _okay._ Clears her throat again. 

"You're telling me this," she says. Keeps trying to pull herself together. To sound like a rational adult instead of a sobbing child or a raging homicidal maniac. "You're telling me about this, so we're, there's a reason. You want to do something - you said, you said he's going looking. Rogers is. With his friend, the airman, the one with the wings, you told JARVIS to make sure they didn't get hacked, on the day - Rogers was going with him. To look for . . . his friend. His other friend. Best friend." 

She sounds like an idiot. God. She can hear herself. 

Pepper has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing suddenly: she wonders if this is how Tony feels a lot of the time, no _filter_ between the stupid things your brain is thinking and using to triangulate what the hell you even know, so it all comes out of your mouth. If this is what living as Tony is like, if that's why he sounds the way he sounds sometimes, especially when he's excited. 

If it is she is once again going to have way, way more sympathy with it from here on in because wow, does this fucking suck. Jesus. Living like this cannot be fucking . . . sane. Is there a medication Tony should be taking for this? She feels like there should be. There has got to be something for people who get stuck like this _all the time_. 

But that's for later. Fuck. 

"Uh," Tony says, like somehow she's got ahead of him for once, jumped right over where he expected to be. "Yeah. Yeah, Rogers is taking Wilson - I mean they're searching, when they have any idea where to go. Try and find him and, um - " one hand goes to the back of Tony's neck and then he lets it fall. Shrugs. "I don't know. Help him, I guess. Figure something out." 

"Okay," Pepper says. Feels like a fucking robot parrot.

Her arms are wrapped around her, she's trying to think so her head doesn't start screaming again. But: okay. Get some idea where to go, and then go looking. That sounds . . . about as far as you can plan with that. And it's not like she knows anything about this guy or anything more about HYDRA than Rogers does so okay, that part has nothing to do with her. What could have something to do with her? 

She has to think. Thinking. She can do that. Tony's still watching her like he's not sure what she's going to do, or if she might break. 

Pepper thinks. She thinks about what could go wrong. And that's like opening a fucking hole into the sun, oh god, so many fucking things could go wrong - 

She asks, "What - what does, Washington, what do they think about this?" 

Tony shrugs again, hands open. "Nothing," he says. "As far as Rogers knows. He's not asking them. He's not really . . . _asking_ anybody. I am pretty sure he gives exactly zero flying fucks what anyone else thinks. And I don't know what the fuck anybody thinks about it - I assume they know, Rogers isn't . . . very good at _covert_ and I mean nobody fucking knows where Romanoff is since she gave Congress the finger. I dunno. Maybe they're all waiting to see if Rogers finds the guy before they make a move - I can't imagine that they're not planning something, and I mean that's . . . what makes sense." 

He shrugs one more time, this time a little helplessly, like he can't think of anything more coherent either. 

And something . . . dark and hot and _angry_ blooms in Pepper's head like a fucking mushroom cloud from Hell. 

"Well _fuck them_ ," Pepper says. Or maybe that's a bit more of a snarl? or a snap? it surprises _her_ , vehemence almost shocking her. 

It surprises Tony, too, she can see it. But. But. But it surprises her, but it doesn't shock her and it's correct and it's true and she's not taking it back because _fuck them_. 

She has to turn away. Stares out the window again. Feels her fingers dig into her crossed arms. "No," she says. "No, they don't get to do that. They don't get to fucking make any moves. They can go fuck themselves - HYDRA is _their_ fault," and she turns back, turns square at him, _daring_ him to argue with her this time, just go right the fuck ahead Tony, "as much as any fucking thing else it's _their_ fault, their fucking agendas, their - no, okay. No."

Pepper digs in, inside her own head, to get a grip. But she repeats, making her voice calmer but just as hard, "No. HYDRA is their fault, what HYDRA _did_ is their fault they will leave this man the _fuck alone_. End of fucking story." 

Tony stares at her, expressionless, for long enough that Pepper almost snaps at him, because what the hell, Tony? 

Then he says, "You know, I . . . thought I was gonna have to argue with you over this." Sounding like someone just hit him in the head with a board or dumped ice-water over his head or both. 

Pepper doesn't even know why it stings, why his saying that makes her _angry_ , but she snaps, "Then you're a fucking idiot." Because it does, a little. 

"Yeah," Tony agrees, surprising her, and surprising her how quiet it is, "yeah I can see that. Taking notes. Pep - hey," he says, tone changing a little. He's carefully reaching out for her arm again. "I think you need - " 

"- I need Eva," she interrupts, cutting him off. 

She knows what he's going to say. That she needs to sit down, she needs some herbal fucking tea, she needs a drink, she needs a fucking Xanax and he's probably right about all fucking four but she's - not ready yet. She's not done. She can't think right, but there's things she needs to do first. Everything he just told her - that's not stuff that can wait, that's, that's stuff that - there's things - ?

She can't think. She needs Eva to come and help her think. "Stop it, Tony," she adds, waving him off, "I'll calm down later - JARVIS, is Eva still here?" 

"Ms de los Santos is currently in her office," JARVIS replies, "although I believe she is preparing to return home." 

"Ask her to come up here instead," Pepper says, and over JARVIS' murmured _certainly, Ms Potts_ , she turns to Tony again and says, "Stop," before he can say anything. "I can't, okay? I need this to happen, first, if I stop I'm going to . . . probably cry, a lot, okay, and you're going to have to deal with me crying, but I need to know that something is happening first, that plans are starting to happen or I'll just keep having to - I need to talk to Eva. No," she interrupts herself. "I need you to talk to Eva. Tell her. I can't tell her." 

"Okay," Tony says, and now he's looking at her more like he's . . .assessing, and less like he's afraid she's going to explode. The voice is measured and measuring instead of wary. He says, "I'll tell de los Santos - if you have a drink of water, and then something else. Stronger than - " 

He's gesturing to her Stella and she suddenly wants to bite his face off. 

"Don't you fucking say a thing - " she starts, and Tony holds up the hand. 

" - than _beer_ , Pep," Tony says, over top of her. "Than beer. That's all I was gonna say." 

He's being nice. He's being _careful_ , because somehow she's turned into a fucking - 

"Sorry," she makes herself say. "I just." 

Pepper stops, and then walks over to the drink fridge, pulls out one of the bottles of water. Tony follows her a little, leans on the bar and watches her, face all full of concern. She wants to explain, but she's not . . . sure how?

"I know - no," she stops herself. She takes a drink of the water, and it's cold in her mouth and maybe that helps, a little. She swallows it and tries to keep from laughing, because if she starts she won't stop. "No, _you_ know, you know? Fuck, better than me, I don't know, I was only . . .there," she has to stop to take a breath, "I was only there for - two days? But I - " 

She stops again and takes another drink. She makes herself stop and take a deep breath. She makes herself not look at Tony because she'll cry. 

"I knew," she says, each word careful, "you were coming. The only way you weren't is if you were dead and you weren't dead because you were still pissing Killian the fuck off, so I knew and I knew he didn't fucking understand you and how you're fucking _insane_ \- we might lose," she says, meeting Tony's eyes, "but I knew you were _coming_ and I knew Killian was going to fucking die and I don't talk about it because you get _guilty_ and I _hate it_ , I _hate it_ when you're guilty for shit that's _his fault_ but I knew you were coming, okay?" she says. 

She looks up, tries to blink the wet back into her eyes. "And you did. And you were still a fucking mess and ridiculous but you did and it mattered and then I, then I got to hit the fucker with a girder and blow him up and that mattered. You came for me and I got to kill him, I got _both_ and it's important. It all . . . sucked, it was fucking horrible but I got that. But _nobody came for him_." 

Her voice gets unsteady and she makes herself take a breath again, and to drag her voice back down. Keep from shouting. 

"Barnes," she clarifies. "Rogers' friend. Nobody came for him. And they fucking . . .put things in him and changed him, changed his . . . _body_ , and nobody was coming. Nobody was _ever coming_ , because they all thought he was _dead_ , Tony, they had no reason to look, and he knew that he knew nobody was ever coming and then I dunno, I guess maybe he didn't even know that there could be someone who would come and that's worse. And I don't know what that's like." 

She needs another drink. God, she needs to be unconscious. "I don't," she says. "But I am the fucking closest you can probably get. And I'm going to have fucking nightmares just from thinking about it. And I am . . .upset." 

"I got that," Tony says, gently. "Am continuing to get that." 

Pepper tries to articulate, tries to - "We decided," she says, and stops. " _I_ decided," she corrects, accepting that, "that we weren't going to salt the earth over Killian. But we fucking could have. Because of what they did. Their fucking . . . everything. And while nobody was coming for James Barnes, they fucking invited his Killian in and gave him a huge fucking house and let him plant his fucking poison right here. We gave them leeway and the benefit of the doubt and it turns out that they've done even worse and now they're pulling this blaming _bullshit_ with the inquest and all of this shit and _fuck them_ and this shit and I cannot fucking stand this, so _fuck them_." 

Tony nods. "Okay," he says. "I mean," when she looks at him, "that's pretty much how I feel. I thought I was going to have to convince you, but um - apparently not. Which okay, yeah, that was me being stupid. So yeah. Totally the same page here. And that's good. I think. I'm glad we're on the same page."

Pepper looks at him and nods a little bit, as he maintains eye-contact, asking wordlessly if she gets that. If she believes him. 

And after she nods a bit he reaches out to take her hands and squeeze them a little. He says, "I just really want you to have a drink now, so you can calm down." 

"Is a drink really what I should be having right now?" Pepper asks, almost laughing except if she starts laughing she's going to end up cackling like a lunatic. 

"No but you probably won't take the Xanax yet because it always puts you to sleep," he says, "so I'm gonna settle for the tequila." 

" - okay," Pepper agrees. Because he's not wrong. 

 

It doesn't take Eva very long to get there, of course. It's all one building. 

Pepper doesn't let Tony touch her again because if he does she's going to collapse into a sobbing wreck. She just sits on the edge of the chaise longue and knows she's basically vibrating like a wound spring. 

When Eva comes out of the elevator she has her briefcase, with her coat slung over it; she puts both down by the door and she's already looking over both of them without hiding it, and with a look that says she's already Concerned. 

Of course she's Concerned. Everything about this would be Concerning. This is not standard operating procedure. 

What Pepper ends up thinking about is how she could in fact be in this exact same position, except in a universe where Eva _didn't_ agree to work for her after the fucking Expo and how much that universe would be terrible. 

She has to bite down on another ragged hysterical bout of laughter when Eva comes all the way into the living room, her head tilted to the side and arms folding, to say, " . . . so just to get it out of the way, _you_ \- " and she looks at Tony " - look like you're going to pass out and I'm only not already calling an ambulance whatever the fuck you think because I assume JARVIS is monitoring your vital signs, and Pepper I don't know what's wrong but you are _not_ okay and yes, both of you are showing just that much. You're aware of that?" 

Tony's the one who says, "Yeah, just . . . come sit down. No, wait," he interrupts himself, "go get yourself a drink, then come sit down, you're going to want the drink after I tell you why you're here." 

He tells her that in a tired voice, because Pepper has to take a deep breath, look at the ceiling and press her palms together and then her fingers against her lips for a second, not to actually have hysterics. 

This, she thinks, is really, really awful. And she would like to never, ever have this kind of reaction to anything again. She really hopes this is a one time deal. That it has to be in fact just . . . that much exactly hitting her soft spots right on the button to have it be like this. This is _awful_. 

Because Eva is Eva, she takes that in, head tilting a little to one side and expression assessing, and for the moment she doesn't ask anymore questions. She just goes and pours herself what's probably not quite a lethal amount of rum into one of the tumblers, before she comes back and sits across from them, one leg crossed over the other, leaning on the arm of the couch she's on, and looks expectant. 

Listening to Tony explain is pretty fucking awful, but also . . . might be for the best. To maybe have some kind of memory of someone saying it attached to the rest of the knowledge, even if it's not actually when she first heard it, something to fill in the appalling fucking black gape in Pepper's memory. 

Apparently Eva knows more history than Pepper did, because she _doesn't_ need the Switzerland mission explained. But even without that it's probably better, Pepper thinks, to have this. Even if it's awful. 

Eva just listens. She doesn't interrupt. 

Pepper should probably be watching her CLO, trying to anticipate how Eva's reacting, reading her body-language, but all Pepper can really do is stare at the carpet and hate, hate without even really having a target because _apparently_ even though Zola survived in some fucking form as an analogue-computer AI (and how fucked up is that) he's since been blown up and besides, Pepper thinks, if anyone was going to actually rip Zola and anyone else from HYDRA limb from limb by rights it should be Rogers and, if he wants to, Barnes. Not her. 

She already got to kill her Zola. 

So she stares at the carpet and waits until Tony's done. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Pepper sees Eva take a full, solid mouthful of rum from her glass and swallow it. She holds the glass to her forehead and closes her eyes for a second. 

Then Eva takes a deep breath and says, "Alright," and her voice is brisk, and crisp, and firm. 

"First and foremost," she says, "as an officer of this company and as someone who likes you both quite bit, as soon as we're done talking about this, Pepper you have _got_ to take a fucking benzo and then take this man with you to sleep in a _bed_ before you both fucking collapse and end up in the fucking hospital." 

As Pepper makes herself raise her line of sight, Eva's giving Tony a _flat_ look and adds, "Again." 

It's a really bad sign that Tony just acknowledges that with a wave of his hand. But now Eva looks at Pepper with the smooth but serious expression that Pepper by now knows that Eva just hasn't decided how she's going to let whatever reaction she's having show, yet, and says, "What do you want to do with this, Pepper?" in her lawyer-voice. 

Pepper takes a deep breath. Trying to match the level tone, she says, "I want anyone who tries to interfere with Captain Rogers for any reason whatsoever to run into an agonizing metaphorical wall of electrified defensive spikes, razor-wire and acid, and crawl bleeding back to their holes to regret it for the rest of their miserable short lives." 

And because her entire head is a fucking ruin right now she hears herself add, "That was more graphic than I thought it was going to be when I started talking." 

Except she also sees Eva exhaling in the slow, careful way you do when you're relieved. And what Eva says is, "I think that sounds fantastic."

Then she adds, voice rising a bit, "Also Jesus Christ, Tony will you sit down before you fall down I am so serious you look like you're about to fall on the floor and die on me and I am not interested in that, okay?" 

It's pretty rare for Pepper to hear any echo of Eva's father's accent in her voice, or anything other than perfect Standard American English, which is actually - if you think about it - a pretty neat fucking trick for someone who didn't learn English until they were seven, grew up splitting their time between Spain and the Dominican Republic, and did their first English degree at Oxford. 

She's asked Eva about that, before, had Eva shrug and say, _It's just mimicking sounds. SAE gets the reactions I want, so I use it._

Natasha's said the same thing. 

But now for the first time it's not just an echo, now the edges of accent and stress are just _there_ as if it's the only mode Eva can reach for. Pepper wonders if she should be touched, or if she should be apologizing for the stress. Maybe both. 

"Pepper," Eva's saying, and Pepper realizes it's again, that she missed the first time Eva said her name. She tries to shake herself, meet Eva's - concerned - gaze. "I'm going to go get a few things started," Eva says. "And a few more things ready to start again for tomorrow. But you? You _really_ need to take a tranquillizer and go to bed." 

"I . . . feel awful," Pepper admits. 

"You look awful," Eva says, bluntly. "You look like you're having a panic attack. Or just had one. Whatever. So I will go and get some preliminary things started and rolling, and you two will go to _bed_ \- okay? We'll talk more tomorrow." 

And oh god, Pepper has to do that. She does. She has to go to bed now. It's like now that Eva knows, and isn't going to try to talk her out of this, Pepper's entire brain has gone, _Ah yes, we're done now._ Before everything was running too fast, too much, too loud - now it's like the whole fucking landscape of her thoughts has turned into toffee and jello and thousand-pound rocks. 

"Okay," she says, weakly. 

 

About ten seconds after swallowing the Xanax, Pepper starts crying, like she knew she would. 

Tony pulls her over to the bed and she curls up in a ball against his chest, tangles her legs around one of his, and buries her face in his shoulder. It's entirely possible he falls asleep before she does - it takes a while for her to stop crying, for the benzo to help her drift off, and he is pretty wrecked. But if he does, his body is _not_ letting that be an excuse to hold onto her less tightly. 

She's okay with that. Very, very okay with that. Even though she wakes up with a horrible crick in her neck and feeling like her head is stuffed with cotton-balls. 

Tony actually looks _grey_ , even the next morning, and doesn't even argue with her when she firmly sends him to the Tower infirmary, getting JARVIS to notify the doctor. She tells him she'll be by later. 

Then she leaves a message with her therapist, although she has no idea how she's going to adapt this one for the consumption of someone not . . . Tony, or Eva, or Bruce, or Betty. 

That reminds her, and she sends an internal email to Betty, explaining everything and also explaining that if she has to talk about this face-to-face again right now she's going to end up back in bed with more Xanax and also there's not really anything Betty needs to do right now except possibly pass it all on to Bruce if Tony hasn't already, so that Pepper doesn't have to do it again. 

After that she gets Harker to cancel and reschedule her morning meetings and tells him to blame food poisoning. If it makes everyone else who ate the same food as her yesterday worried, well. She didn't really like anyone there anyway, and they can just sweat. Harker just says _of course_ and manages to radiate concern through text. 

It's almost eleven thirty when it's Eva making her phone ring, and not anyone she's decided not to talk to this morning, so Pepper picks up. 

And without any preamble at all, Eva says, "So given SHIELD is dead and so's Nick Fury - where's Maria Hill, right now? And what kind of salary and options do you think might actually entice her to work for you?"


End file.
